


Snowshard

by VincentHopkins



Category: None - Fandom
Genre: Fantasy, Fiction, LGBTQ, Multi, Original Character(s), Original Fiction, Possession, Rape, Violence, blood/gore
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-18
Updated: 2017-01-17
Packaged: 2018-09-18 07:05:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death, Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9373508
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VincentHopkins/pseuds/VincentHopkins
Summary: In a strange continent known as Sucrydos, a war lasting 800 years has ravaged the land. It is lead by a violent, reclusive warlock known as Acrillico, or the 'Poisoned One.'Out in the distant north, two Elven brothers, Typhus and Cassius Winterleaf, lived peaceful lives until Acrillico's mighty army invaded their hometown, slaying all that dared to oppose Acrillico's rule. Raising a mighty blade against the wizard, the two brothers set out to recruit an army of mercenaries battle-hardened by living in constant strife. They have only one goal in mind: Killing Acrillico and freeing Sucrydos. Not even death will stop the Resistance of Nierma.





	

Prologue: The Eight-Hundred Years of War

Now declines the Fifth Era of Humankind, Midsummer, in Sucrydos, the central land of Nierma. Sadly, the Era of Humankind will not last for even one more moonyear. After the end of the Fifth Era, the land will succumb under the winning side in the war. Thus will start the First Era of Allied Decline. The Elves, Dwarves, Gnomes, Humans, and Northmen who fought against the demons of Acrillico are waning in strength. If nothing stops his rage, Acrillico will destroy them all. The land is saturated with bloodshed, the sands red and wet, the seas frothing crimson foam onto the shorelines. Corpses stink the air with revolting aroma as brethren throw brethren into crackling bonfires. Houses are built from bones and empty skulls. All the while, Acrillico cackles in his tower, gazing across the empty, Golden Sea he created from the suffering of innocents.

The war of Nierma had raged along for hundreds of years. The great wizard, Acrillico, had terrorized the peoples of Nierma for three Eras. He murdered millions of all the races and vowed to enslave all the known world. People meant nothing to him. As sieges against his spires, he experimented on lizards and ancient behemoths of reptiles that crushed the ground beneath them in his highest room hundreds of meters in the air. The besiegers’ kin and friends’ wights slaughtered for him.

The Euphony of the Skinless was his greatest force, the walls lined with the flayed skins of his foes. Piercing screams flowed from the cellars. There he made his home tower, five others connected by rickety bridges of bone. They were the Crimson Garden, a squat lookout filled with marrow and vessels, coiled into flowers and vines. It is said men who storm the Crimson Garden get trapped by the veins and arteries of their fallen, to be stripped down to another sprawling plant. The Corridors of Vivisection were crammed with iron cages, filled with helpless lizards, rodents, and other, unspeakable monstrosities as you climb higher. The Grotto of Susurration murmured with the tortured whispers of lost souls, caught and bound to the towers by the Flesh Magics of the warlock. Anyone who enters will eventually be driven insane by the depressed moans of wraiths killed by Acrillico. The Natatorium of the is more of a cavern than a tower, the crater inside the shadowglass filled with the bodily fluids of mutilated warriors; blood, perspiration, urine, pus, mucus, and so on. The solution is corrosive, melting steel like paper in a flame. The murky brine of bodily fluids is dotted with bloated undead, ready to burst like a weeping boil if slashed with a sword, the retained fluids exploding onto any attacker. Finally, and certainly the most frightening, is the Steeple of Falsity, the obsidian walls fringed with false gods and goddesses of stone. The tar-dipped skins of the soldiers covered them like a blanket, and on the tight, black flesh was written their epitaphs to the gods.

 

From his experiments, Acrillico created the Goblinmen, a weak, cowardly race that he used for scouts, their skin mottled asparagus green. They were conglomerated from native geckoes and slain Elves, molded together into a squat, hunchbacked creature. Cinderbreakers, long, slug-like beasts with two gigantic, crushing and ripping arms for tearing through stone buildings and knight’s flesh and armor alike. Their ‘hands’ are studded with bony saw teeth, useful for shredding even the stoutest of buildings down like dollhouses. Their one, black eye in the middle of their rocky face stares blankly into the fear-filled eyes of its victims, without a flicker of remorse.

Acrillico’s main footsoldiers were lizard-like, humanoid warriors that were naturally found in the desert, his homeland, as small lizards, until he experimented on them and created a deadly race of predatory reptiles.

There were the Reptals, the normal footsoldier, armed with a hooked sword, and a jangly chestplate and greaves, crafted from cruel, black iron shaped into spikes and razors. Bells and baubles hung from their ridges and fins everytime they survived a battle. A seasoned general or commander would have silver rings and bronze amulets tinkling from his waist and head ridge like a jewelry store.

Then there were the Dinals, the heavier troops. They fought with an iron war-axe and a crude shield of horn and fur, and wore complete body armor, made of steel. They collected weapons instead of gold from the enemies they killed, even smuggling and stealing from other Dinals. They would kill their brethren for the simplest dagger, or the most elaborate Synerian claymore. They were famous for their body paint, which glistened wetly in the sun, the dark crimson made from the red mud of the shorelines of Southmoor, stained from the gore of massacre.

Rarer were the Pterols, the winged troops. The gliders dove at their enemies like kamikaze, slitting throats with the coiled dagger of steel sharpened to a razor edge. They held a bow and fiery arrows, lit with an oil flask and flint hanging from a pack at their waist when they were airborne, launching volleys of flaming bolts down at the Humans with deadly twangs of the sinew bowstrings.

Even more uncommon were the Raptols, the fast skirmishers with a shield and two daggers. They wore no armor, except for a loose loincloth from which their daggers hung. They took no prizes or spoils of war, instead relishing the fever of a quick-paced stabbing, bathing in the heat of battle. They had nothing but black orbs for eyes, much like a shark.

Lastly were the Turtals, a tortoise-like warrior with a heavy shell and a stony arm. They towered over the miniscule warriors they trampled, wielding a vicious hammer the size of a grown man, the head as large as a child. What they lacked in speed from their stubby legs they made up in strength and endurance.

 

Acrillico, _That_ is a name that struck fear into the hearts of people everywhere. Not that he was always evil. Every man or woman is good when they are born. The stories changed over time, almost becoming extinct altogether.

As a young man from Southmoor, Acrillico worked for the king of ancient times, Bertrand. He was a farmhand, plowing the acres of wheat fields with his oxen. His friend, an Elf in his teen years, trained to be a soldier for the king. No one in the compound could match the Elf’s skill. It was rumored he climbed through the mountains of Northwind to seek out a fabled sword, others say he rode a dragon across Northwind, others say he wielded a magical blade embedded in a mountain. But whatever it was, he was unmatched. He quickly became an elite guardsman and great friend of the lord.

Acrillico stayed behind working as a farmhand, plowing his master’s fields, but when the war came to the fertile land, fighting over the Briarclaw and Peridot rivers that fed the green wetlands like a mother, Acrillico was called to action like a mongrel dog. Facing onslaughts of deadly desert nomads from Summerhold, he cut his way through swathes of turbaned warriors, leaving a long trail of bloodshed wherever he went. His sword cut through the cloth armor and boiled leather like a hot knife through hot butter, and hacked through wooden spears and stone swords like a woodchipper. From behind during a fast-paced duel with a legionnaire, another nomad caught him through the lower ribs with a steel-tipped spear. He continued to fight on, despite the wound through his liver. He started to tire from the swinging and hacking with his blade, and slowly the fever from battle began to wear away. Suddenly the spiked end of a pike caught him through the abdomen and eviscerated him with a quick drag across the belly. His insides spilled out beside him, staining the grass red. After the remaining soldiers cleaned up the bodies, Acrillico’s corpse could not be found. Some mystical, ancient force possessed his body and had let him survive.

This force was the Ancient Demon, Shalius. In the Elvish language, Shalius means ‘Great Blight’. Shalius poisoned the land in the First Era of War, leaving stinging memories of the disfigurement he spread.

Shalius taught the scarred Human the Flesh Magic, the oldest and most ancient of the elemental mystics. Under the grasp of his newly-acquired sorcery and the iron-hard grip on Southmoor, the green wetlands were terraformed and killed, slowly buried under dry sand. Volcanoes sprang up from the earth as he transmuted the land, building up a fortress of obsidian from the glass that fell like black daggers from the volcanic rains. Without worrying about risk of his life because of Shalius’ presence, he slayed all that he could, hammering out a destroyed civilization. Only one thing matters now - survival.


End file.
